Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which the convicted criminal is to remain in prison for the rest of their natural life. Crimes that result in life imprisonment are extremely serious and usually violent. Examples of these crimes are murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, illegal drug trade, epidemic, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated property damage, arson, hate crime, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, theft, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide.
Martin Archer Flavin was an American playwright and novelist. His novel Journey in the Dark received both the Harper Prize for 1943 and a Pulitzer Prize for 1944. His play The Criminal Code was produced on Broadway in 1929, and it was the basis for the movie The Criminal Code. In all, he had eleven plays on Broadway between 1923 and 1937.
Tennessee State Prison is a former correctional facility located six miles west of downtown Nashville, Tennessee on Cockrill Bend. It opened in 1898 and has been closed since 1992 because of overcrowding concerns. The facility was severely damaged by an EF3 tornado in the tornado outbreak of March 2–3, 2020.
The Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW) is a state prison for women owned and operated by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in Marysville, Ohio. It opened in September 1916, when 34 female inmates were transferred from the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. ORW is a multi-security, state facility. As of July 2019, 2,394 female inmates were living at the prison ranging from minimum-security inmates all the way up to one inmate on death row. It was the fifth prison in the United States, in modern times, to open a nursery for imprisoned mothers and their babies located within the institution. The Achieving Baby Care Success (ABC) program was the first in the state to keep infants with their mothers.
Convicted is a 1950 American crime film noir directed by Henry Levin and starring Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford. It was the third Columbia Pictures film adaptation of the 1929 stage play The Criminal Code by Martin Flavin, following Howard Hawks's The Criminal Code (1930) and John Brahm's Penitentiary (1938).
Before I Hang is a 1940 American horror film released by Columbia Pictures, starring Boris Karloff. The film was directed by Nick Grinde and was one of several films Karloff starred in under contract with Columbia.
Fred Niblo Jr. was a successful American screenwriter. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film The Criminal Code (1931) together with Seton I. Miller. Niblo retired from films in 1950 to become a businessman.
Seton Ingersoll Miller was an American screenwriter and producer. During his career, he worked with film directors such as Howard Hawks and Michael Curtiz. Miller received two Oscar nominations and won once for Best Screenplay for the 1941 fantasy romantic comedy film, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, along with Sidney Buchman.
The Maryland Metropolitan Transition Center (MTC), formerly known as the historic "Maryland Penitentiary", is a maximum pre-trial security Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services prison located in Baltimore facing Greenmount Avenue between Forrest Street and East Madison Street. It was established in 1811 as the first prison in the state and the second of its kind in the country and the original buildings faced towards East Madison Street above the east bank of the Jones Falls stream and adjacent to the old stone walls of the Baltimore City Jail, earlier established in 1801, rebuilt in 1857–1859, and later in 1959–1965.
Devil's Island is a 1939 American prison film directed by William Clemens and starring Boris Karloff. This film is notable for Karloff in a then-rare sympathetic role, as opposed to his usual antagonistic characters in horror films. The plot appears to have been recycled from John Ford's The Prisoner of Shark Island, which depicted the true story of doctor Samuel Mudd, who treated the injury of John Wilkes Booth after he assassinated Lincoln.
The Missouri State Penitentiary was a prison in Jefferson City, Missouri, that operated from 1836 to 2004. Part of the Missouri Department of Corrections, it served as the state of Missouri's primary maximum security institution. Before it closed, it was the oldest operating penal facility west of the Mississippi River. It was replaced by the Jefferson City Correctional Center, which opened on September 15, 2004. The penitentiary is now a tourist attraction, and guided tours are offered.
The era of American film production from the early sound era to the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934 is denoted as Pre-Code Hollywood. The era contained violence and crime in pictures which would not be seen again until decades later. Although the Hays office had specifically recommended removing profanity, the drug trade, and prostitution from pictures, it had never officially recommended against depictions of violence in any form in the 1920s. State censor boards, however, created their own guidelines, and New York in particular developed a list of violent material which had to be removed for a picture to be shown in the state. Two main types of crime films were released during the period: the gangster picture and the prison film.
Women's Prison is a 1955 American film noir crime film directed by Lewis Seiler and starring Ida Lupino, Jan Sterling, Cleo Moore, Audrey Totter, Phyllis Thaxter and Howard Duff.
Rufe Persful was an American criminal, convicted of murder, kidnapping and robbery. He was considered one of the most dangerous criminals of his era by the authorities.
Imprisonment began to replace other forms of criminal punishment in the United States just before the American Revolution, though penal incarceration efforts had been ongoing in England since as early as the 1500s, and prisons in the form of dungeons and various detention facilities had existed as early as the first sovereign states. In colonial times, courts and magistrates would impose punishments including fines, forced labor, public restraint, flogging, maiming, and death, with sheriffs detaining some defendants awaiting trial. The use of confinement as a punishment in itself was originally seen as a more humane alternative to capital and corporal punishment, especially among Quakers in Pennsylvania. Prison building efforts in the United States came in three major waves. The first began during the Jacksonian Era and led to the widespread use of imprisonment and rehabilitative labor as the primary penalty for most crimes in nearly all states by the time of the American Civil War. The second began after the Civil War and gained momentum during the Progressive Era, bringing a number of new mechanisms—such as parole, probation, and indeterminate sentencing—into the mainstream of American penal practice. Finally, since the early 1970s, the United States has engaged in a historically unprecedented expansion of its imprisonment systems at both the federal and state level. Since 1973, the number of incarcerated persons in the United States has increased five-fold. Now, about 2,200,000 people, or 3.2 percent of the adult population, are imprisoned in the United States, and about 7,000,000 are under supervision of some form in the correctional system, including parole and probation. Periods of prison construction and reform produced major changes in the structure of prison systems and their missions, the responsibilities of federal and state agencies for administering and supervising them, as well as the legal and political status of prisoners themselves.
Penitentiary is a 1938 American crime film directed by John Brahm starring Walter Connolly, John Howard, Jean Parker and Robert Barrat. It was the second Columbia Pictures film adaptation of the 1929 stage play The Criminal Code by Martin Flavin, after Howard Hawk's The Criminal Code (1930) and followed by Henry Levin's Convicted (1950).
Charles Cahill Wilson was an American screen and stage actor. He appeared in numerous films during the Golden Age of Hollywood from the late 1920s to the late 1940s.
The Billion Dollar Scandal is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by Harry Joe Brown and written by Beatrice Banyard, Willard Mack and Gene Towne. The film stars Robert Armstrong, Constance Cummings, Olga Baclanova, Frank Morgan, James Gleason, Irving Pichel and Warren Hymer. The film was released on January 7, 1933 by Paramount Pictures.
The Last Parade is a 1931 American pre-Code crime drama film directed by Erle C. Kenton and starring Jack Holt, Tom Moore and Constance Cummings.
Criminal is a 1933 French drama film directed by Jack Forrester and starring Harry Baur, Pierre Alcover and Jean Servais. It is a remake of the 1930 America film The Criminal Code by Howard Hawks, itself based on a 1929 play of the same title by Martin Flavin.
